Red Revenge: ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Graphics Card Review. Page 21

We have had two kings of the hill after the release of Nvidia’s GeForce 7900 GTX because it shook the lofty position of the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX but couldn’t overthrow it. ATI Technologies didn’t like that at all and wants to reestablish itself as the sole maker of fastest single-chip graphics cards with its new Radeon X1950 XTX which comes at a recommended price of only $499!

Futuremark 3DMark06 build 1.0.2

The Radeon X1950 XTX has a bigger advantage over its predecessor in 3DMark06 than in 3DMark05 if we compare their overall scores because the newer 3DMark defaults to 1280x1024 resolution. The gap is 231 points.

ATI’s new card cannot catch up with the GeForce 7900 GTX, which has 24 TMUs, in the SM2.0 tests. The difference is only 141 points, though.

But the new graphics card from ATI meets no competition in the SM3.0/HDR tests. It is faster by 216 points than the GeForce 7900 GTX which is a big enough difference, the overall scores being about 2500 points. Let’s now see how the Radeon X1950 XTX does in particular tests.

The first SM2.0 test is similar to 3DMark05’s first test, but the Radeon X1950 XTX has a smaller advantage here, less than 10% in high resolutions. Anyway, the new card is in the lead.

The second test produces a picture similar to what we have seen in Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends. The Radeon X1900 XTX is faster than the Radeon X1950 XTX in the standard resolutions. This is most likely a fault of the current version of the Catalyst driver.

None of Nvidia’s graphics cards can simultaneously work with HDR and FSAA, so the Radeon X1950 XTX can be compared only with its predecessor in the SM3.0/HDR tests. As in the previous 3DMark06 tests, the new card isn’t far better than the older one; the difference is no bigger than 10%.

It’s all generally the same in the second SM3.0/HDR test, but the gap is the biggest in 1920x1200 resolution, which is logical because the load on the memory subsystem is the biggest, too. So, the Radeon X1950 XTX is not far better than the Radeon X1900 XTX even if full-screen antialiasing is used.